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The world of late-night television has changed drastically since David Letterman launched The Late Show on in 1993. Letterman’s Late Show was the first successful network competitor to NBC’s Tonight Show after Johnny Carson stepped down. Over the past two decades, the late-night talk show landscape has become more competitive with Jimmy Kimmel at ABC, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at Comedy Central, Conan O’Brien at TBS and Chelsea Handler at E! (though she is expected to leave at year-end). As Stephen Colbert takes over Letterman’s spot, it’s a much more competitive and fractionalized late-night world.

As an example, Letterman’s audience has dropped from over 7 million viewers during his first season to averaging under 3 million viewers today. Over the same time frame, The Tonight Show has seen its audience drop from over 6 million viewers in 1993-94 to less than 4 million over the most recent 12 months. Besides cable, the biggest competitor to the networks in late night is DVR playback. According to Nielsen, over the past year, there are, on average, 4 million adults 18-49 that are watching recorded content via DVR weeknights from 11:30PM-12:30AM. That’s more people than watch The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show combined.

Young viewers are the most to blame for the shrinking late-night audience. David Letterman’s audience has aged along with the host. The median age has risen from 39.6 in 1993-94 to 58.2 in 2013-14. The median age for all five late-night broadcast TV shows is older than 50. Even The Colbert Report’s median age has risen from 34.0 in 2008-09 to 42.3 five years later.

Younger late-night television viewers are more likely to be found on cable. One of the more successful networks in late night has been Adult Swim. The network’s programming consists of animation and averages well over 1 million adults 18-49 watching between 11:30PM and 12:30AM, an audience greater than either CBS or ABC. The median age of Adult Swim viewers in the time period is an enviable 23.4.

While the television audience may be aging, young viewers are still watching late-night shows -- they’re just doing in online. According to Nielsen’s Cross Platform Report for the fourth quarter of 2013, adults 18-34 watch over 1½ hours of online video content each week more than any other age group. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Stephen Colbert and others have their own YouTube channels with millions of subscribers. Additionally, many late-night comedy sketches are designed for online video. Jimmy Kimmel’s online prank “worst twerk fail ever” has been viewed 18.5 million times over the past seven months. One month after becoming host of The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon’s sketches had over 120 million online views.

A younger David Letterman also had numerous “YouTube” moments, only the website did not exist. Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel grew up watching Letterman and copied his comedic style of irrelevance suitable for the Internet as well as television. CBS picked Stephen Colbert for that reason.